25 years of commitment to healthy music-making

SMM - Are you a musician looking for support with health issues? For advice, you can contact the advice center of the Swiss Society for Music Medicine (SMM) by e-mail (see box) and leave a telephone number or e-mail address. You will be contacted within one to two working days. SMM consultations are free, confidential and non-binding. They can be used by people of all styles, be it classical, jazz, pop, folk music or other styles. Above all, the first steps in the counseling process are the same. Anatomical, physiological and emotional circumstances are ultimately the same for everyone.

If you wish, you can already explain in the email why you are contacting the SMM. It helps our medical advisor to prepare for the conversation. However, you can also simply let us know that you wish to be contacted without providing any further details. We would be happy to offer a permanently staffed and accessible hotline. However, this would far exceed the company's resources. Our first advisor, an extremely experienced ENT specialist, is a doctor in everyday practice and is therefore unable to take telephone calls at all times.

If, for whatever reason, an initial telephone contact is the only option for you, you can first contact our secretariat. Our secretary Pascal Widmer will be happy to inform you about further steps, but is not a medical specialist. You can also find the secretary's telephone number in the box at the bottom of this page. For reasons of medical confidentiality, you should limit your contact with our secretary to questions about the formal procedure.

Our advisor will listen to you in an initial consultation, assess your situation and symptoms and, if necessary, recommend further investigations or treatment, if possible in your region of residence. You decide on further steps independently and on your own. Your data will not be stored by SMM and will certainly not be passed on.

The SMM was originally founded 25 years ago as a grassroots organization for people seeking help, at a time when health challenges in everyday music-making were even more taboo than they are today and there were no specialized musicians' medical professionals in Switzerland. In the quarter of a century since then, it has built up a network of specialists in medicine and numerous forms of therapy in Switzerland. In this way, it aims to prevent specific musician-medical phenomena from being overlooked or incorrectly treated.

The SMM pursues exclusively and directly charitable purposes. It works closely with international specialist societies in the field of musicians' medicine. The members are musicians, doctors, psychologists, therapists, institutions as well as supporting members and patrons. The experts at our advice center are independent of all institutions (orchestras, music academies, associations, etc.). They have no financial interests and do not favor any form of therapy.

We also welcome a general interest in the medical aspects of music-making. Membership of the SMM benefits musicians and the music and helps people to stay healthy even in this highly competitive professional world and to maintain music as a source of joy.